Nationalmuseet

Started: 2017-09-12 22:19:14

Submitted: 2017-09-13 23:12:05

Visibility: World-readable

16th August 2017: In which the intrepid narrator explores Copenhagen

For breakfast, on our first full day in Denmark, Kiesa went out to the
grocery store around the corner and down the street from our Airbnb and
picked up pastries. Since we were in Denmark I asked for a Danish --
not just because it seemed appropriate, but also because my guidebook
told me this was a legitimate thing that Danish people really did (even
if they did call them Viennese pastries).

Danish for breakfast in Denmark

Our first order of tourist business for the day was to visit
Nationalmuseet (the National Museum of Denmark, for those who prefer
English), which promised to be Denmark's premier history museum. We took
the metro into central Copenhagen and walked through the narrow,
cobblestone-paved streets to the museum.

Pride flag in Copenhagen

When we arrived, once we'd paid for admission, we headed for the
children's section of the museum, tucked away on the ground floor.
Calvin and Julian immediately took to the child-scale play-things, which
were generally themed to coincide with the things in the adult part of
the museum.

Julian and Calvin fence as Vikings

I eventually got bored watching my children play
Viking dress-up and left Kiesa to watch our kids while I looked through
the rest of the museum, starting with the Middle Ages and Renaissance
galleries on the first floor. (Denmark appeared to adopt the European
zero-based floor counting scheme, so the first floor was above the
ground floor; in the museum map the ground floor is identified as floor
zero.) I saw various artifacts collected from around Denmark, many of
which seemed to be religious in some fashion; there were altars and
crosses and ceremonial vessels of various kinds. Religion loomed large
in the lives of medieval Danes but the exhibits also showed household
wares, various weapons, plus a few random human skeletons with text
discussing how they died and what we could learn from the bones.

Display case of weapons

All of the exhibits were described in Danish and English. (Given our
proximity to Germany, and its much larger population relative to
Denmark*, I expected to see more German, but it did not seem to be
especially popular. Everyone we talked to spoke flawless English, which
was great, since I didn't speak a word of Danish, except for the
occasional cognate I recognized from German.)

[* More people live in the Bay Area than in Denmark.]

I traded places with Kiesa and let her visit the museum while I watched
Calvin and Julian play -- which mostly involved following them around to
make sure they played well with the other children. Kiesa visited the
Middle Ages and Renaissance galleries as well as the "Stories of
Denmark" exhibit.

Calvin and Julian in a Viking longboat

Kiesa returned and we left the museum in search of lunch, which we found
a few blocks away at a café with an all-veg buffet.

Atrium at the National Museum of Denmark

We returned to the museum and made our way through the Danish Prehistory
galleries, which worked from the earliest artifacts of human habitation
in Denmark to the Vikings, starting with flint axe-heads, then
grave-sites (my mind immediately flashed to "ceremonial burial" as an
important early stop on the Civilization tech tree), and bronze
axe-heads, swords, and other artifacts. We saw a bunch of large rune
stones, then Roman artifacts, and finally Viking artifacts.

Runestone at the National Museum of Denmark

We took a break in the shop, where I bought a small bronze reproduction
of Thor (continuing my tradition of buying small bronze reproductions of
iconic sculptures from countries I visit, though I believe this is my
first European bronze). I took a quick walk through the ethnographic
exhibit, paying more attention to the display cases crammed with parkas
and boots and snowshoes and artifacts from Greenland than the other
cultures represented. (It was a bit weird to see American Indian
artifacts displayed so prominently in a museum an ocean away -- though
perhaps not any weirder than seeing European or African or Asian
artifacts in an Asian museum.)

Kiesa lets Julian drink something chocolate

It was mid-afternoon by the time I decided that we had seen enough of
the museum and headed off in search of a cafe for a snack. I checked my
notes and decided to head to the Round Tower, built to house an
observatory in some prior century. Our route took us through a
pedestrian-only street lined with shops on both sides, and Kiesa wanted
to drop by a few shops to look for short-sleeved shirts (she had read
the forecast wrong and packed too many long-sleeved shirts; the weather
turned out to be comfortable shirt-sleeve weather) or a small functional
purse to compliment the one she had (but couldn't use universally
because it was colored black and wouldn't go with everything). I spotted
the Lego store down the street (which had been on my map but I'd
neglected to notice that it was so close) and took Calvin there while
Kiesa shopped.

Lego store in Copenhagen

The Lego store was something of an experience. It wasn't huge but was
packed floor to ceiling with Lego sets of all descriptions and mobbed
with people looking at the boxes and other merchandise for sale. I
looked at the build-your-own-minifig stand, and the pick-a-brick bins in
the back of the store, and then couldn't help but lust after the larger
sets aimed at adult fans of Lego.

Lego view of Copenhagen

Calvin was amused by the augmented reality display that would recognize
the covers of certain Lego boxes and superimpose an image of the set on
top of the box, rendered as if it were in three dimensions siting on top
of the box.

Lego sculptures in Copenhagen

The entrance to the store featured a large mosaic of a scene from the
streets of Copenhagen, plus two human-sized minifiguers made out of
small Lego bricks. (I had to wait several minutes for the steady stream
of tourists to move before I could get the relatively clean shot below.)

Calvin with a life-sized Lego minifig on a bicycle

At some length we left the store, rendezvoused with Kiesa, and continued
down the street towards the Round Tower.

Street in Copenhagen

The Round Tower was, as advertised, a tower that was round.

Round Tower

We paid the admission fee and headed up the ramp that climbed in a helix
up the inside of the tower. (Unlike the somewhat-disconcerting spiral
ramp up the inside the tower of
Isarlat in
Jaipur, this spiral ramp was much broader, rather more gentle, and
appeared to be actually designed as a ramp, rather than filled in
later.)

Julian climbs up the ramp at the Round Tower

At the top of the tower was a broad open-air observation platform with
views of Copenhagen, crowded with tourists in the bright evening sun.

Calvin and Julian on top of the Round Tower

View of Copenhagen

I could see the city in every direction, with only a few towers and
spires taller than our observation point -- and even the Øresund
Straight, its bridge, and Sweden beyond.

Jaeger, Kiesa, Calvin, and Julian on top of the Round Tower

We climbed down the ramp and headed back to our Airbnb, stopping by our
corner grocery store for food to make supper.